We sailed outfurther than I ever imagined andturned to look back, gauge the distance, watchthe changing sky. I tell her I do not think we are alone in this world though theshore is all we know, the line of cottonwood trees, the sloping bankquickly receding.

—from “Seaworthy,” Marie Reynolds

She was in every way seaworthy, up for the voyage. And though the night-boat carried her off early this morning, Marie Reynolds gave the world one exquisite collection of her poems before she went. She made it one of the great priorities of her last months to give the poems that became “Seaworthy” to me.

“If I…,” she said one day to me in May looking at me as we sat in her living room, “I want you to…” and she handed me a small stack of typed poems. “I can’t assemble it into a manuscript. Can you find someone to type it?” she asked.

This indicated a major shift in my dear friend. She was getting thinner every time I saw her, the metastases eating away at her. She’d stopped treatments, this former nurse, because they weren’t working. It was the third time cancer had overtaken her.

“Yes,” I assured her, not saying what I was thinking, that I wasn’t letting her stunning words out of my hands, that I would type up the poems into a manuscript. We had already agreed that I would publish it. Neither did I say that I hoped she would live long enough for me to put her printed book in her hands.

As it happened, she did. Three of her poet friends (Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Susan Flynn and Dennis Hock) wrote blurbs for the cover in a few days. Susan Kelly-DeWitt contributed a beautiful painting for the cover. A magnificent designer, my co-publisher and our superb copy editor at River Rock Books flew into action to design and assemble the book and get it to a printer in a week. Not knowing how much time Marie had left, I had a proof copy made so she could hold it, perhaps read it. In 13 days, I delivered 100 copies of “Seaworthy,” her first and only poetry collection into her hands as she laid on the sofa in her living room. She smiled, held it to her chest, ran her hands over the soft cover. She let me take a photo of her, so depleted, so happy.

I leaned over, kissed her on the cheek that day in late July, whispered, “I love you,” and she whispered, “Thank you. I love you, too.” I knew this was goodbye.

Bob Stanley, the president of the Sacramento Poetry Center, wanted to do a reading of Marie’s book. Though she couldn’t attend, 27 people who loved Marie came to read poems from “Seaworthy.” Bob shot video of each reader and got it to Marie’s daughter, Meredith, who showed her mom all those readers, saying how grateful they were to Marie—as poet, writing group leader, inspiration to so many.

Cover art by Susan Kelly-DeWitt

Then I went on vacation in Canada, expecting to hear while I was gone that Marie had died. But she wasn’t ready to go, despite not eating for weeks. When she finally let go, early this morning, she’d been without food for more than six weeks. She was 67 years old.

We met as part of the Sutterwriters writing groups hosted by Lawrence (Chip) Spann at Sutter hospitals in the early 2000s. Marie was still working as a nurse at Sutter Memorial, but she’d been an English major at Sac State before she became a nurse. She and her husband, Steven Black, were both English majors. They both became nurses. He worked in the ER at Sutter General until he became ill with ALS and died in November 2008.

As Marie cared for Steven at home, she invited a number of us former Sutterwriters to join her in their living room once a month on a Sunday evening. We’d each bring a poem, read it aloud, hear someone else read it aloud as Marie kept time on her iPad. Ten or fifteen minutes to talk over the poem, say what people thought was working well and to offer gentle suggestions, often in the form of questions.

How many times did I hear her say about my flabby drafts, “I wonder if you need these two lines,” or “What would happen if you moved this section?” Sometimes she’d just smile and say quietly, “It’s working.” She was always gentle, always spot-on with her suggestions for me. Her own poems, even in early form, emerged as polished gems, and we sat awestruck by the precision of her language, the elegant construction of her poems. Some of them now appear in “Seaworthy.”

We continued to meet after Steven died, the last time late in 2017. What I would give to sit in that living room one more time with Marie, to hear the iPad’s gentle chime that was the signal to begin reading and end discussion of that piece.

Just a few days ago in the writing groups I host, thinking about Marie’s long goodbye, I wrote a draft of a new poem, which ends (for now) with these two stanzas:

I want to find the wings you helped
me grow, fly to you and whisper,You’re OK. You’re OK, my dear,cleared for takeoff, ready to leave

this clump of cells and bones behind,
you who are becoming a poem
without words, stretching beyond breath
and body, resting here in my heart.

I know she’d have something to offer me about this, though I don’t know what. For now, as so many who loved Marie bid her farewell—including her daughter, as well as her new love, and many friends and family members—I will hold onto her words, the last part of the last poem in “Seaworthy,” which I read before a full house at the poetry center 27 days before she died:

What does it take to trust? We are at sea,you and I, and the soul that rises,rises like an island between us. Warydreamers. At night, we sleep. Moths watchfrom the screens. Oars slide without soundinto the water and all through the hours,the night-boat glides us toward morning.

That was the subject line of an email I got from Dick today. The first line of the email was:

“BAD yellowjackets!!!!!!”

And what followed was a series of photos—some of which I shot, some of which he shot—of my backyard, which, normally a place of safety and sanctuary, where I got kamikaze’d by a swarm of pissed-off yellowjackets a few days ago.

To be fair, they had reason to be angry. While Dick and I were merrily vacationing on the cool-weather’d, blue-skied Vancouver Island, a man named Henry was cleaning up my backyard of decades of unchecked ivy activity. Henry, a career landscaper, and his wife Olga just did a great clean-up/planting of the apartment house next door to me. And I accosted them one day asking if they could do something similar for me.

Since I had a practically dead tree removed earlier this year, my whole front yard is a new climate zone. It went from mostly shady to primarily sunny, killing most of my longtime azaleas. I loved those azaleas, but I’m once again remembering that when things die, stuff changes, and whether we welcome those changes or not, they’re there, and get used to it, Janis.

So I asked Henry and Olga for their expertise on what might work in my now-sunny front yard as well as hiring Henry to do a major cleanup of the whole kit and caboodle.
What I didn’t expect was that (a) he’d do it while I was out of town, (b) he’d uncover a wasp’s nest in an old stump, and (c) forget to tell me about (b).

So I was out in the yard the day after I returned, stunned to see the urban jungle of my backyard (i.e., the way-too-much-ivy’d section) laid practically bare (like a haircut, it’ll grow back). I went out there with the hose and was watering the dry area when… bam! out flew a squadron of yellowjackets aimed right for me.

I should say here that I am not fond of stinging things and have, in fact, been known to scream in a very high, little girl voice when, on rare occasions, I’ve been stung by flying insects. Can’t help it, not very brave of me, but there you go. And without thinking, I immediately turned the hose on myself, trying to spray off the yellowjackets (which are, it turns out, a type of wasp) all over me. (Note to self: That doesn’t work; in fact, it pins the damn things to you.)

I did scream in a high voice and pulled off my T-shirt clotted with wasps going for blood and hollered “ow! ow! ow!” as I was repeatedly stung. I thought to turn the hose nozzle off, dropped the hose and ran for the back door to the house, trying to shed the yellowjacket air force and hoped I wasn’t bringing in any bad guys with me.

Inside, I leaned against the door, breathing as hard as a fleeing cartoon character, my skin alive with stings. I sped toward the bathroom, stripping off more clothes, whispering to myself, “You’re OK, you’re OK,” horrified to see one rogue pilot crawling on the floor by the tub. Naked by now, I headed for the kitchen, retrieved the fly swatter and returned to the bathroom.

I routinely shoo flies out the back door rather than kill them, let spiders set up shop in the kitchen’s highest corners each summer to catch the flies that refuse to leave, yet I did not hesitate to whap the downed enemy before I got in the shower to scrub off the venom, to wash any stingers down the drain, red welts already blooming. (Also learned: Unlike honeybees, yellowjackets can sting multiple times and not die, and their genus name is vespula, which is rather pretty.)

When I emerged, clean and somewhat calm, I stood before the mirror and counted: 16 stings and still standing. I didn’t feel shocky. I took deep breaths without a problem. I downed antihistamine, dabbed welts with aloe vera, then tea tree oil, then cortisone cream, all while avoiding the corpse on the floor (which was nicely mounted and appropriately photographed at the top of this post by Dick Schmidt, retired Bee photographer).

Later that day, I went with Dick to a doctor’s appointment. His GP is also mine, and at the end of visit, I ventured a question about wasp stings.

“Should I be concerned that I got stung 16 times by yellowjackets today?” I asked.

The doctor’s raised eyebrows answered my question. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Stung,” I said and told him what I’d done to rinse and dose myself.

He asked a few good followup questions, then suggested Benadryl and cortisone cream, which I added to my regimen and added, “That’s a lot of stings.”

More than 30 years ago, doing a story about beekeepers in Vacaville, I got stung three or four times and had an allergic reaction. Those were honeybees; these were wasps. I don’t know if there’s a difference, but I was glad to be still standing.

And again, while I’m generally sympathetic to insects, I called in an expert bee guy, who came the next day to… well, frankly, commit waspacide in my back yard. Honeybees can be relocated; yellowjackets cannot, I learned from Paul, the bee guy.

And in a matter of minutes, Paul sprayed a concoction of “a little insecticide” with peppermint oil, which, apparently does wasps in. I did not go outside to watch this procedure, but I took photos from inside the house.

And Paul told me, after it was all over, that as soon as he went out there, he was immediately swarmed by hundreds of bees (“500 to 700,” he figured), and I knew I’d done the right thing to call him.

Two days later Dick and I ventured out in the back yard to survey the carnage. Surprisingly, we found no yellowjacket corpses, though we did find their comb with little dead wasps-to-be inside:

The yard was blessedly free of the wasps, who were, I understand, doing their jobs, defending the nest and their queen. Perhaps there was a kinder way to persuade the yellowjackets to leave, but I haven’t found an effective one on the internet yet.

But here’s the thing: Sometimes, in a crisis, we discover things about ourselves that we didn’t know. Somehow I knew what to do, and I did it (admittedly, with a few screams along the way). I didn’t panic. I usually think of myself as a weenie, but when I stood in front of the mirror, dabbing unguents on my stung spots, I decided that I am tougher than I think I am. I took steps to quell an allergic reaction. I am a 60-year-old woman who is not an easily frightened weak person (Merriam-Webster’s definition of “weenie”) after all.

And that—after six decades on the planet—is not a bad thing to know about yourself.

The Big Muckle delivered to two unsuspecting first-timers at the White Heather Tea Room.

muckle1. (chiefly Scotland) A great amount.

So first, to call it “the big muckle” is a wee bit redundant, it seems to me, but you’ve gotta hand it to the Scots when it comes to a fine word. And then, when you understand that this is what the White Heather Tea Room in Victoria, B.C., calls its biggest array of tea goodies, and when it arrives, three tiers tall of savouries* and sweets, you really appreciate the term.

And second, if anyone ever needed further proof about how much my fella loves me, all they’d need to know is this: Not only does he follow me into bookstores never asking, “Are you finished yet?” but also when we’re in Victoria, he follows me into tea rooms, this man who doesn’t drink tea, and doesn’t make fun of the fussy finger sandwiches. OK, he teases me a little, but only enough to make me laugh.

Last year when we were in Victoria, Dick accompanied me to the White Heather Tea Room, which is my current favorite spot for tea in the city. Yes, people talk about going to the grand Empress Hotel for tea, and that’s all well and good, but I like a simple, single room where every place setting has a different cup and saucer. Where they bring out homemade scones so fresh you can smell the oven on them, and the little cups of lemon curd and clotted cream make my heart sing. (And yes, if you know me, you know that I try to avoid sugar, but in Victoria, at tea, I make an exception.)

I attribute this to the early influence of two Englishwomen, Molly and Barbara, who were friends of my godmother’s. When I was 19, about to go on a college tour in and around London with my favourite* history professor Jim Straukamp, my godmother Jo Corbin arranged for me to spend a few days with friends of hers “in the country.” An aspiring Anglophile anyway, I’d sat in Dr. Straukamp’s Tudor/Stuart history class at Sac State and salivated over stories of the battling sisters (Mary and Elizabeth), the other queen Mary of Scotland (whose son James eventually became Elizabeth’s heir and king of England). When he said he was leading a trip to London over winter break, I knew I had to go. I used my summer money earned as a lifeguard/swimming instructor/coach and, with my parents’ blessing, departed for London.

And, in the middle of that trip, I spent time with Molly and Barbara in their 400-year-old thatched-roof Tudor cottage in Suffolk. These two retired schoolteachers (Barbara was the headmistress of a girls’ school in Sudbury; Molly taught art there) lived together for years and spent much of their retirement travelling* the world. They met my godmother in Southern California through mutual friends, and in an any-friend-of-yours kind of way, took me under their wings to show me around. Barbara made Yorkshire pudding to go with the roast beef, and I was instantly hooked. They introduced me to the shandy (half beer, half lemonade… not my favourite*), and they took me out to tea (“proper tea”) and stuffed me full of scones and clotted Devonshire cream, which looked like whipped cream to me but was ever so much better. We went to tea at least three times in small, single-room settings with white tablecloths and a mish-mash of china on the tables and morsels I’d never seen the likes of before.

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. In England. During a bloody cold January. That’s how much I loved it.

On their next trip to California, Molly and Barbara came north to meet my parents, who put them up and showed them around our neck of the woods. Their favourite* part? Tower Books on Watt Avenue (where Molly bought me my first volume of Rumi poems) and next door Country Club Lanes.

“Do you want to bowl?? my mother asked them.

“No,” they said. They just wanted to watch, the two (to me) little old English ladies, who remembered watching American GIs bowl during the war. And they did, with rapt attention, for a good half hour. I wish I’d asked them what they were thinking about as they watched.

Molly died in 1986 in their cottage called Waylands in Lavenham, and Barbara died a few years later. I cannot sit down to tea with triangle cucumber sandwiches or pinwheels of bread and smeared ham or scones with clotted cream and not think of them. Such was the early influence of Real Englishwomen on this California girl. And, a few years ago, finding the White Heather Tea Room in Victoria brought Molly and Barbara back to me in a big way.

But, I realize, not everyone shares this affection for tiny sandwiches and cake and tarts and scones.

Last year we sampled the Big Muckle at the White Heather, and even the non-tea drinker, who vastly prefers Pepsi, gave tea a chance. (That’s how much he loves me.) But! He discovered that he was inordinately fond of the White Heather’s lemon curd and some of the best homemade shortbread we’ve ever had.

Just today we returned to the White Heather for our 1:30 p.m. seating, and I told Dick that one of the reasons I chose the place was because this time I could have a smaller tea service (the “Not So Wee” Tea), still with lots of goodies, and he could have a sandwich. He selected a black forest ham and Swiss cheese grilled sandwich on foccacia with (and this surprised me) cold cantaloupe soup (“It was weird because it was cold, but you wouldn’t want it warm,” he said, adding that he liked the flavour* of cantaloupe).

Turned out Dick was most happy. And he did not have to think this:

No, he got to have a proper lunch, and I got to have a proper tea, and yes, I shared the lemon curd, scone and shortbread with my fella, who enjoyed that part just fine. I did not make him drink tea; he chose plain old water, though there was “pop*” on the menu. I loved the cucumber sandwich, mini quiche and mini scone with (today) chicken salad, the pinwheels with egg salad and ham salad, the yummy green and black blend they call Mad Hatter tea… and oh, yes, gobs of Devonshire cream on the big scone.

The fact that we did this today on what would have been my father’s 88th birthday also made me happy. We got to lift lunch, as Dick likes to say, with several of our companion spirits, American and English—Aunt Jo, Molly, Barbara, Dad (who probably would have preferred the shandy… or more likely just the beer).

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.—Norman Maclean, “A River Runs Through It”

Let him be
standing just like that,
legs apart in the stream,
one hand on the rod,
the other pulling the fly line
toward him, red filament pooling
in a circle atop the swirls
of water at his knees.

Let him be
there in July,
when the chinook
are heading upstream,
when they are ripe with eggs,
when they might be hungry
for the fly.

Let him be
the young man in waders
wearing a reddish beard,
his calm hands unhurried
as he waves the wand
over his head in a graceful
arc between 10 and 2,
deftly setting leader and fly
atop water on its busy way
to the sea.

Let him be
aware of salmon
swimming toward him
as the river runs by him.

Let him be
aware of me as I stand
dry-footed on shore,
watching. Let him cast me
a fond smile. Let him wish me
a happy birthday, many
returns of the day.

Let him know
that I made it to sixty,
though he did not.

Let me turn and walk
back up the hill
whispering,thank you,
and once again,goodbye.

…this woman was laboring to bring this little blonde girl into the world,
a baby showing up early (a habit not cultivated for the rest of her life),
the baby tiny at 5 pounds-ish, the woman, even pregnant, lithe and dark-haired
and lovely, just having had her 27th birthday, her husband, about to turn 28,
out in the hospital somewhere, waiting for news of his wife and child…

…and they had no idea what lay before them, but the hope of this little person,
their new roommate, and, as it happened, the next little person they made,
a sister for the first one, as they made a family…

…and on the eve of that former baby’s 60th birthday, she is grateful
for the labor that went into making her, for that first push into the world,
followed by many other pushes into things she didn’t think she wanted to do
(tying her shoes, riding a bike, swimming, playing in the band),
for encouraging the things she did like to do (write, read,
publish a neighborhood newspaper, publish other people’s books)…

… and for the continuing love and support of a longtime mother
and for starting that former baby on her lucky, lovely six-decades-long life…

Today I shall behave as if this day is the day I will be remembered.—Dr. Seuss

The five victims of the June 28 shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. (Photo/Karl Merton Ferron, Baltimore Sun)

Did any of them think that as they went into work Thursday morning, that this would be the day they would be remembered, the five whose lives ended in the newsroom? Did any of them think, as they typed or talked on the phone, walked to the copy machine, got coffee, “This will be my last day”?

I can’t imagine that they did. And yet it was for four journalists and one sales assistant, who together, according to a CNN story, had more than 75 years experience in the reporting, editing and delivery of news. Their lives ended when a disgruntled reader, who had threatened the paper for years, turned into a gunman who opened fire through the glass door of the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland.

For the record (the old journalist in me wants to note in the third graf) the people who died were: Gerald Fischman, 61, the newsroom’s editorial page editor; Rob Hiaasen, 59, an editor and features columnist; John McNamara, 56, a sports reporter and editor; Wendi Winters, 65, a local news reporter and community columnist, and Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales assistant.

I didn’t know any of them, though I knew Rob Hiaasen’s writing. He’d been an assistant editor and Sunday columnist for the Gazette since 2010. Someone sent me a link years ago to one of his columns, and I’ve followed his work ever since.

Hiaasen was 59 years old—my age—and, in addition to his work at the paper, he was a brand new adjunct professor the University of Maryland where he’d just taught his first advanced newswriting class to eight students.

He’d been a news anchor and reporter at news-talk radio stations throughout the south, and he was the brother of best-selling author Carl Hiaasen, who wrote on his Facebook wall Thursday night, “What [Rob] would want me to say was everything [they did] was for the readers.”

And, Carl Hiaasen added about his brother, “He spent his whole gifted career as a journalist, and he believed profoundly in the craft and mission of serving the public’s right to know the news.”

By the time I read this last night, I was so teary, I kept having to dab at my eyes to keep them from dripping onto the keyboard. I didn’t know them, but I knew them. I knew the small newsroom with perhaps 20 people in it who put out a daily newspaper. I knew the characters of a newsroom; I was once one of those characters. Leaving newspapers for first a wire service and then a magazine broke my heart, though I often say that the newspaper left me—or at least it did after it laid me off.

But that was on a large metro daily. The small newspapers—two of them—were where my heart lay. The second one, the Vacaville Reporter, as it was known in the early 1980s, took me in, embraced me, put me to work and gave me a community of colleagues whom I treasure to this day (though many of them have died). I knew the cop reporter with a bottle of whiskey in his desk to help him through the stories that tore out hunks of his soul. I knew the grumbling city editor and the young female managing editor, the assistant sports editor who covered the high school teams where he’d once gone to school. I laid out waxed strips of copy on large sheets of paper that would become the paper, shoulder to shoulder with the publisher, joshed with the paste-up guy designer who became my best buddy, shared an office with the “soc hen,” as society editors were once derisively called—though she was so much more than that, truly the best feature writer on the paper. The man who became my husband got his first full-time job as a photographer there, which turned out to be his last job, 20 years later when he died.

Those people became my mentors and friends, my post-graduate education in journalism before I ever got a master’s degree. It is no exaggeration to say that they helped make me a journalist more than my time editing the college newspaper (which was also significant). They set me up for the rest of my career on that wire service, the big newspaper and the city magazine, and eventually as a journalism professor.

Participants in a candlelight vigil for the victims of the shootings at the Capital Gazette march down Main Street in Annapolis, Maryland. (Photo/Jerry Jackson, Baltimore Sun)

And though they were not people I knew, the deaths of people at the Capital Gazette struck me like a backhanded blow—also because my student editors whom I advised last semester at my community college wanted to talk about journalists in danger. Not because they cover wars but because they just do their jobs. “What if someone walked in our newsroom with a gun?” they asked in March. This was not an outrageous question; my college had a campus shooting a few years ago, and a student was killed. It was a targeted, gang-involved shooting, and we were not overtly threatened, but we didn’t know that at the time.

So we had the hard conversation that I’ve thought about for years: that we cannot guarantee our safety, that, yes, anyone could walk in and threaten us, hurt us. I’ve been in occasional situations with journalism students over the years when upset people came through the door hollering. Those were scary moments, but luckily for us, the worst thing that happened was the time an angry someone went around campus, gathered up all the issues of the paper and threw them away.

But now the paper is online, updated daily, printed monthly. My students’ work is more visible than ever, and, consequently, so are they.

“I hate that I can’t protect you,” I told them after a horrendous murder spree at a Northern California veterans facility earlier this year. “I hate the fact that all of us, but journalists in particular, are more vulnerable than ever before. People will sometimes put comments on your stories on the website and say awful things. You may get hateful emails and phone calls.”

And that was before someone called my editor-in-chief, a woman in transition, a “faggot” on the phone.

The Capital Gazette people were targeted by an angry, probably deranged man, but so could any journalist. In other countries journalists are killed far too often. But, I naively thought for years, not here. Not in the United States.

And now, in the current climate of hate, I know that that’s no longer true. Regular, workaday, small-paper journalists. As Petula Dvorak, Washington Post columnist, wrote:

“These are not the people chasing congressmen through the halls of the Capitol, or wrangling with CIA officials for information on the latest terrorist cell. Ever read about the construction on your street, the plans for the new rec center, who won the crab contest, how the state delegates voted on highway funds or about the uptick in crime at the mall?

“As Gazette community news editor and metro columnist Jimmy DeButts tweeted, ‘We try to expose corruption. We fight to get access to public records & bring to light the inner workings of government despite major hurdles put in our way. The reporters & editors put their all into finding the truth. That is our mission. Will always be.’

“This is local reporting. This is journalism.”

And somewhere from deep inside themselves, a small crew of journalists—writers, editors, photographers—went to work after the horrible events of that day.

Capital Gazette journalists, including Joshua McKerrow (facing forward), worked to report the story of the attack on their newspaper from the back of a pickup truck in a parking garage after the shooting. (Photo/Thalia Juarez, Baltimore Sun)

Chase Cook, a Capital Gazette reporter, tweeted in the hours after the shooting. “I can tell you this: we are putting out a damned newspaper tomorrow.” He later told The Baltimore Sun: “I don’t know what else to do except this.”

And he and his colleagues did. Someone had the brilliant idea to center 57 words including the names of the people who were killed on a mostly white editorial page in the next day’s paper.

As journalist and humorist Dave Barry, a good friend of Carl Hiaasen’s wrote on his blog: “…the news people I know are still passionate about what they do, and they do it remarkably well. And here’s the corny-but-true part: They do it for you. Every time they write a story, they’re hoping you’ll read it, maybe learn something new, maybe smile, maybe get mad and want to do something.”

That’s what the people were doing at the Capital Gazette when they were shot. They were gathering words and photos, headlines and ads to assemble into the next day’s newspaper. And their colleagues, despite the day’s events, immediately got the news out through social media, then began to call sources and interview people for stories and photos that went up on the paper’s website, then assembled those pieces into an old-fashioned, actual newspaper the next day.

Because that’s what journalists do—find the truth, write the first rough draft of history (as former Washington Post publisher/owner Phillip Graham said), and go out the next day and do it all again.

Bless them all.

If you’d like to contribute to a fund to benefit the families of those killed at the Capital Gazette (set up by Madi Alexander, a Bloomberg journalist in Washington, D.C.), you can do so here: www.gofundme.com/capitalgazette.

It was her brother who gave her the nickname. Kevin was all of 3, doing battle with words that wouldn’t wrap around his tongue quite right, including his older sister’s name. Consequently, Lauren came out Nonen. He became Kebbin, as in:

And boy, did we sing that song as Aunt Jan drove the kidlets around in her car, the too-funny kids who stood in for the ones I didn’t have, the too-smart-for-Aunt-Jan kids who pounced on the occasional bad word and fined her a quarter for each one. I never heard those kids swear until they were in college, which, I used to joke, Kevin must’ve partly financed with quarters he got from me.

And look at those decades swinging by us in a whoosh, so that this summer on my birthday, it’ll have been 31 years since my sister and brother-in-law gave me the best present ever: Lauren Michelle Just, the eighth grade teacher-now bride-now wife. I was 29 when she was born; I’ll be 60 on our birthday this year. Almost three years later Kevin arrived with a full head of blond hair (his sister’s head resembled a cue ball for the longest time) and a grin that melted us all the first time he flashed it… even if, as his Uncle Cliff said, it probably was just gas.

Speaking of… this was the kid who, as a little guy sitting in the back seat of my car, would holler, “GAS!” and hit the button for the window to roll down, Lauren next to him waving her hand at the stink coming out of her brother, who’d laugh like a hyena as Lauren protested with big-sister vehemence: “Kev-INNNNNN!”

Kevin Just, all grown up, escorts his mom, Donna (my sister) to her seat at the wedding.

They have amazing parents who did, as far as I can tell, most everything right with their kids, but honestly, Lauren did her best to civilize Kevin and turn him into a respectable brother and eventually a very fine man. (She showed her “leadership qualities” early.) It killed us when Kevin could finally pronounce his l’s and r’s, though, and even more so when his sweet boy voice dropped in puberty.

What I remember most about them as little kids was that they made me laugh a lot. It was hard to stay annoyed with them, even when they were trying to annoy me, because in the next minute they were cracking me up. And they knew it; they knew they had Aunt Jan wrapped around their little fingers… all their little fingers. They still do, but they have grown into kind, responsible grownups, both of them teachers like their dad, Eric, a high school art teacher—Lauren, an eighth grade English and history teacher, and Kevin, a middle school music teacher (band, orchestra, choir and guitar).

I am not in the least bit biased when I say that they are extraordinary humans in every way.

Lauren and her dad, Eric

OK. Maybe a teensy bit biased. Which is why, at Lauren’s wedding on June 23, the hottest day of the year so far, it was all I could do not to blubber as she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm and the lines of “Sunrise Sunset” played in my head:

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don’t remember growing older,
When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday

when they were small?

Look at these two—Lauren and her new husband, Gerald Giel. They’ve been a couple for a decade, starting their relationship about the time Lauren came to live with me in Sacramento and go to Sac State. Gerald came with her, and they were inseparable. Now they’re both teachers (Gerald teaches mechanics at a specialized trade school in Sacramento) who live in Lincoln with their three cats. They are two of the kindest people I know.

Lauren and Gerald, walking into the happily ever after

At this point I was glad that I had fished out clean tissues from my bag for my sister to tuck in her dress because she knew she was going to need it, and if she needed one, I’d probably need three. We both needed those tissues.

Some of my favorite photographic moments came before the wedding, like this one of Lauren with her grandmother, my mom, Darlene Haag. I know that she was thinking of my dad, the late Roger Haag, who was undoubtedly there in spirit, as was my late husband, Cliff. Grandma has been a huge supporter of Lauren and Kevin in every way, contributing, among other things, to the completion of their teaching credentialing programs. Because she’s that kind of grandma. (Yay, Mom!)

Lauren and her grandma, Darlene Haag

This might be my favorite photo from the whole day. Donna and I had the great good fortune to have two older girl cousins, Dee and Pat, who in turn each had two children of their own. This is Lauren with Charlotte, Dee’s granddaughter, who happily stepped up as flower girl. Charlotte is 7, a smart, good reader, and she did a great job at the altar, even holding a bouquet at the side of her best buddy, Ashley, the maid of honor.

The bride and her flower girl, Charlotte Parratto, who just turned 7.

Ashley, by the way, will marry the boy we used to call Kebbin (I still do sometimes) next year in June. (That’s Ashley on the far right.) She’s already a cherished part of the family, but we will be most pleased to have her in it officially.

From left: Eric, Lauren, Gerald, Donna, Kevin and Ashley

Dick, who has been my partner for more than 20 years now, has known Lauren and Kevin since they were small, and he has become Uncle Dick to them, as he is with his own niece and nephews.

Dick (my best fella) and Kevin (my best neph) on a very hot wedding day with medicinal beer.

Lauren and Gerald’s is the first wedding in their generation in our family, and I have to say, it was a fine occasion—beautifully planned and executed on the hottest day of the summer so far. But don’t these people look cool anyway?

My peeps: me, Mom, Lauren, Eric and Donna

Gerald’s family and old friends also turned out for the big occasion. And it was wonderful that the Southern Californians (cousin Dee in red, her daughter Marryn next to her and Marryn’s husband Jerome) came up for the big event, along with Dee’s second daughter Robyn, her husband Johnny and flower girl Charlotte. But also, in the second row, there’s the Bay area contingent—my cousin Pat’s family—from left, her son Stephen, then Pat and her daughter Suzie and husband Jeremy.

Dick and the SoCal and Bay area fam.

My mother’s father, James E. Keeley, used to say, “Each generation improves the breed,” and I have to say, especially looking at my sister’s and brother-in-law’s kids, that’s true. I can hear my dad saying to Donna and Eric, “Ya done good,” and especially applauding Eric’s superb specimen of a 1956 Chevy, which was the departure vehicle for the newlyweds. (Eric loaned it to Johnny and Robyn when they got married nine years ago, too, making them the coolest bride and groom in Tahoe that day.)

Eric’s ’56 Chevy: the perfect departure vehicle

Yep, it was a classic, 100+-degree Sacramento valley day for Lauren and Gerald’s wedding, but the fans on every chair helped. And I sat there moistly with tissue and dabbed at my eyes as the little girl we used to call Nonen began her life as a grownup married lady. “Aunt Jan is so proud!” I used to tell the kids when they performed in the choir and the band or did some other commendable thing.

Aunt Jan is still so proud and wishes Lauren and Gerald a most happily ever after.

Donna and I never went to sleep-away camp, but I remember you singing this song when it came on the radio, and you knew all the verses. You were, Faddah, to us, the master of the witty comment, the bad pun, the dumb joke and goofy song. You and Mom together and separately taught us to walk, ride a bike and roller skate, to identify poison oak, to swim and climb trees and water ski. You whispered in our ears from the time we were born that we would be smart, read well, be good at school, go to college.

Perhaps your greatest gift to us was that you didn’t raise us to be prissy girls. That is, you made sure that we knew how to properly wash a car, change a tire and the oil, and you had Donna mowing the lawn before she was in junior high. Though, truthfully, you couldn’t have kept her from car washing and lawn mowing; it became her thing. I was terrified of lawn mowers until I was in my 20s. Nor did I ever learn how to throw a softball, though you tried to teach me. (Donna did, though.) Another good lesson: Not everything works as well for each kid. But, you said to me, “You gotta try. Just try. See what happens.”

And what happened was that you and Mom raised two strong women, feminists before we knew the word, to stand on our own two feet, find careers we loved and be independent in the world.

Knowing that you had a young writer in the family, you brought home the hand-cranked mimeograph machine, plunked it on your workbench, cranked it up so it gave off the sulphurous odor of rotten eggs and brought my first newspaper to life, the Granite Bay Gazette. (Mom typed my stories on stencils on the manual Smith-Corona, which later became mine.)

You took us to Girl Scouts and 4-H meetings and events, to the pool where we swam on the synchronized swim team and eventually became water safety aides, then lifeguards and swimming instructors. You and Mom were our first audiences as we sang at home and family gatherings. You attended our school band concerts (bless you!) and applauded as if we were pros. Your second daughter takes after you in so many ways—you bequeathed your fixit skills to Donna. The woman is fearless, tackles any chore set before her, including laying her own kitchen flooring, and, since you died in 2004, is Mother’s ace Fixer of House Stuff. She sews, too.

I, on the other hand, inherited almost none of those practical skills (“Janis has other gifts,” you and Mom liked to say), but thanks to you, I knew that I would only marry or partner with men who made me laugh and thought I hung the moon. And I found two who have.

I’m pretty sure you were the one who taught me where to knee a guy if he got “fresh,” which I did when I was a freshman and a senior boy who invited me to his prom drove me to a hilltop and parked the car. I was ready for him, and he promptly drove me home. It is a skill that has come in handy a few times in my life.

So every Father’s Day I look up and say aloud, “Thank you, Faddah, literally, for making us to begin with, and for everything you made us after that—especially the strong women part.” You set a high bar for your girls—allowing us to be ourselves and trusting us to make choices for our own lives—and we are beyond grateful to you and Mom for your support in every way, which continues to this day. We know how lucky we are.

I am awed by people who do what seem to me impossible feats. My friend Ed Cole, for example, who, bit by bit, is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to Canada through the western states. This to me is just this side of nuts, but Ed, who is now 72, has been hiking all his life, mostly in the Sierra. The first 700 miles of the PCT are through desert, though, and anyone who’s hiked those bloody awful miles will tell you that they’re not for sissies.

Not that there’s any doubt, but Ed Cole is no sissy. Look at him hefting his heavy pack, getting ready to get back on the trail after his lunch break.

Puttin’ on the pack

He’s hiked long sections of the trail in past summers that took him from California’s southern border to Castle Crags, south of Dunsmuir, California. He went back on the trail at Castle Crags June 8 and hopes to make it all the way to Canada this summer, hiking 10 to 15 miles a day and carrying a 35- to 40-pound pack. On his first days of hiking this month he reacquainted himself with the trees and increasingly rocky landscape as well as rattlesnakes on the trail. He also saw two bears closer than most people would like. Unfortunately, he did not yet have his bear canister for his food with him. Fortunately, the bears and the snakes moved on and didn’t bother Ed.

That’s where I came in. Five days into his hike, I brought Ed his bear canister (which looks like a big plastic container filled with food that bears allegedly cannot break into) at the Parks Creek Summit PCT crossing in the mountains northwest of Weed, California. I was pleased to be Ed’s first resupply person on this leg of his journey. And because I arrived with a gallon of water, a foot-long Subway sandwich and two lawn chairs so he could briefly sit on something with a back on it, I am now an official Trail Angel, as they call them on the PCT.

Phil and Ed eatin’ brought-in sandwiches on the trail.

Ed made a friend in his first days on the trail, as hikers often do. Phil Carter of Roseville also recently went back on the trail, so they teamed up for a bit. But Phil injured his knee, and though Ed taped up Phil’s knee for him, Phil needed to come off the trail. (Ed is a big believer in the power of taping various parts of his legs for support.) So it was that I came down the mountain with a PCT hiker in my car to get him to Mt. Shasta City where he could arrange a ride home. I was sorry that Phil had to give up his hike for now but glad that Ed was continuing his. He’s been stymied by weather conditions in recent summers (too much snow for too long), and he’s been itching to get back out there.

Lawn chairs left behind at a trail crossing for others to find and sit in.

Now Ed’s out there somewhere in those mountains, nearing the Oregon border. He’ll be met at the Etna summit by church friends bringing food and supplies, and after that his sweetheart, Cheryl Fuller, will meet him in Ashland where he’ll take a rest day or two off the trail before he continues.

Ed has a novel that my new publishing company, River Rock Books, will publish this fall called “The Love Song of Pinky Wollerman.” It’s a great story about a man named Pinky Wollerman who lives and ranches in California’s great central valley in the 1950s who becomes entranced with the idea of Australia and travels there, not realizing that he’s a suspect in a murder. Pinky undertakes a great journey and does, indeed, find love in surprising ways. But one of Pinky’s greatest loves (which Ed writes about beautifully) is for the land that he lives on, ranches and traverses in the outback before returning to California.

Ed’s hiking plan

It’s no coincidence that as Ed was working through many drafts of Pinky (which is Ed’s nom de plume on Facebook, by the way, and what we sometimes call him in the writing groups I host), Ed began making plans to hike the PCT. It’s a serious undertaking that yields great lessons—one of which Ed has long known: You’ve got to hike your own hike, at your own pace, often alone, which is just fine. And when others come along with whom you’d like to spend time, you hike with them for a time, and when they go, that’s fine, too. Always, though, it’s the magnificent landscape with all of its challenges of weather and critters that keeps you company along the way, which is a very fine thing. He reminds me that we all need to stop, turn and view the place from which we’ve just come as well as look toward the direction we’re headed, take a few deep breaths, appreciate the steps we’ve taken to get there, and then keep going.

So many people who know and love Ed wish him well on his journey, one of those explorations of the heart as much as one of land and space and sky and trees. What he finds out there this time will become part of his inner life as the rest of his travels have. We should all undertake such explorations in our lives—not necessarily the PCT but ones that suit our particular paths—that take us away from our everyday selves and allow our hearts to be enriched in the process.

Sue Lester was (luckily for me) the girl next door when my parents moved my sister and me in 1966 to this out-of-the-way place next to a lake named Folsom. Sue and I were 8 years old, though she would turn 9 in late November. She was Susie then, and I was still Janis, the names our mothers called us. But it didn’t take long for us to adopt nicknames (hers was Suz for a while), which is how the world knows us now, as Sue and Jan. She was my original BFF, and I’m pleased to say that she still is.

Gracie

This is Gracie, Sue’s sweet kitty, who, unfortunately, died last year. Sue, now a veterinarian in Nevada City, deeply mourned Gracie’s passing. But Sue, who has seen more than her share of pets die in her personal life and profession, is nothing if not resilient. And Gracie lives on, not only in Sue’s heart, but now in Gracieland (named by Sue’s dear friend Ginny), Nevada City’s newest home concert venue. I was fortunate to attend the second concert in Gracieland history this afternoon where four very talented, professional musicians delighted a small audience.

Four fine musicians playing together for the first time: (standing) Jeri Jones and Velvy Appleton, (seated) Robert Powell and Pam Delgado.

Jeri Jones and Pam Delgado are half of Blame Sally, one of Sue’s favorite bands. Velvy Appleton is half of the band Spark and Whisper. Robert Powell is a wicked pedal steel and guitar player. Robert and Velvy teamed up for half the show at Gracieland, and Jeri and Pam made up the other half… and then, magic! as all four played together.

The Pam and Jeri Show

The Robert and Velvy Show

I felt lucky to be part of the invited guest list. The room is perfectly set up, the sound is amazing (one of the musicians commented that it sounds better than “90 percent of places we play”), and you couldn’t get a more appreciative, focused audience. And, of course, the musicians were top-notch, playing in a variety of musical styles and genres, each of them masters at their craft.

(far right) Sue Lester, impresario

I have known Sue Lester for (gasp!) 52 years this summer, and she was my first music guru. It was Sue who introduced me to music new to my young ears: Herman’s Hermits, the Beatles, Iron Butterfly. (It was the ’60s… can you tell? “In-a-Gadda-Davida” was never my favorite, though Sue used to rock out on air guitar before I knew it had a name. I played air drums.) She has one of the most extensive CD and vinyl collections of anyone I know, and she introduced me, literally, to Blame Sally at a live show.

When Sue bought her cute house in Nevada City a few years ago, she did so in part because the open bottom floor immediately made her think “concert venue.” She’s been planning this ever since. She and friend built a small stage, she rented chairs and recruited friends to help with food and set-up, and she knew just the musicians she wanted to play Gracieland. (She has a list of others, too.)

Mom and daughter

I think my buddy Sue has added a new title to her already impressive list (M.S., DVM, BFF): impresario, which is one who, according to dictionary.com, organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas. And one of Sue’s main backers and biggest fans is her mom, Nell Lester, along with her late father, Bill, who were two of the most devoted parents I’ve ever known. They did good, as my father used to say, and I’m grateful to them for producing such a fine daughter and friend.

Nell and Sue Lester

So bravo, Gracieland! Thanks to all the folks who helped Sue make her venue a success. I see a summer concert series in the future. Here’s to a lot more music to come!